


The Whole Box

by laliquey



Category: True Detective
Genre: F/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 02:14:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1711262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laliquey/pseuds/laliquey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rust tracks Claire down post-Carcosa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whole Box

It steeps in Rust's gut for weeks, starting with a glimpse of someone who looks like her - an earlier her - at the Phillips 66 Pitt Stopp getting a Snapple. He follows her around the store like the lecherous creep he might be and deflates to find she doesn't look that much like Claire after all.

It's a weird echo of his old self.

Living with Marty now, it feels like he's on his third or fourth life and it's hard to remember being married, though he's currently in an informal marriage with a laptop. Every last tooth and tarsal of the Carcosa remains were entered into a database by hand, and with the DDC and state crime lab using different numeric identifiers, there are discrepancies that only a human eye can find. It's become Rust's pet project, since sorting the mountain of bones and getting them back into familial hands would've taken too long even if it'd happened years ago.

The numbers swim. He's been at it for hours and his productivity's slipping; Marty's gotten good at sensing that and taps his bare forearm with a cold beer. "Take a break, already. Maybe watch some sleeping kitten videos. Mix it up a little."

Rust takes the beer and pauses, because Marty's already so good to him and asking for shit is so hard. "Hey, Marty? You think you could you help me look up something?"

"Could you be any less specific?"

"I, uh, sort of wondered if I could find my ex-wife."

"Yeah, I could help you do that. When were you last in contact?"

"Years ago. North Shore had a CPA that did my taxes when I was in there, and when I signed 'em I found out I was single. She petitioned and I guess I signed something...don't remember it, though. Probably better that way. Anyway..." He looks wide-eyed and a little vulnerable. "Where do I start?"

"Well you could start by-"

Rust tilts the laptop towards him like he can't even type the characters himself. "Doubt she's Cohle anymore. Her maiden name's McGrath. Think she might be an art teacher, she was on the verge of going back to school when shit fell apart."

"Hmm, okay." Marty types and sifts through some entries while Rust futzes around on the other side of the room like he doesn't know what to do with himself. "Hey, Rust? Is her middle initial C?"

"Yeah, Christine."

"Well, if this is her she's got a new last name and lives in Austin."

"Huh. That sounds about right. She's the type who'd gravitate to a blue city in a red state."

Marty pokes around more and finds she's divorced from someone other than Rust, volunteers at the Blanton Art Museum, and lives three blocks from the yarn boutique where she works. She drives a seventeen year old Volvo, which makes Rust shake his head a little because of course she does.

*

He's nervous the night before he leaves - tries not to drink too much and makes a sandwich to take with. Marty doesn't want to be rude but it's worth asking. "You gonna clean yourself up at all?"

"Don't want to misrepresent myself," Rust shrugs. "I could be going all this way for thirty seconds interaction for all I know. Might as well keep it real."

Austin's a five hour drive, which provides a wide cut of time to revisit the fear that his love is counterfeit, and that when it comes to women he's only ever been looking for a mother, not for children but for himself.

Laurie was one, in an overbearing way.

Claire and her soft patience had been one, too, for a while.

He's inside the city limits when he finally buries it back down, just in time to realize how out of place he is in her neighborhood. It's thick with pretentious wine bars and shops that sell things nobody really needs...the whole errand starts to feel like an enormous mistake, but then a rock star parking space opens up and he has to follow through.

He pauses in front of the yarn shop to wrinkle his nose at its name: _Opera Length Purls,_ and he isn't sure whether it's a pun on time or jewelry or both; tax records identify Claire as an hourly employee so at least it isn't her fault. He wonders if he could break a heart rate monitor right now and opens the door to a dull little bell clink overhead.

She's in the back, seated and clicking away with a pair of silver needles and pink string. Pale waves streak her dark hair and she's older and softer everywhere, but it's her. "Can I help you find anything?"

"Hello, Claire."

"I'm sorry, do I..." The strain to recognize him is almost worse than if she'd told him to fuck off. "Oh. Oh, hi."

"Thought I'd come by and see how you are, what you're up to." He takes a confetti-shot ball of wool from a shelf, can't believe it's fifteen dollars, and puts it back.

She's panicked, gripping the needles tight and pressing her back against the wall. "You must be in some kinda twelve-step program."

"No. I...I've, um, been through some shit this year. An' I been thinking about you, and...yeah. Didn't think you'd want to see me but I had to try." If he can get her to look in his eyes she might trust him, but she's stiff and won't look up.

"This isn't gonna be like last time."

"What happened last time?"

"Rockport?" she says. "The bank?"

"I wasn't ever in Rockport with you."

"You don't remember. Huh," she clucks. "'Course you don't."

"Whatever it was, I'm sorry."

Brown eyes fix on him, bitter as hazelnuts. "Rust, just tell me why you're here so we can get this over with."

"There's something I wanna tell you about, if you'll let me."

"Then tell me."

"I...kinda gotta work up to it."

"Let me guess. You need a drink or ten."

_Dammit._ "I'll take you out for dinner, someplace public. You can leave anytime you want. Claire...please." He didn't expect his nose to start burning this early. "I swear I won't bother you after this. Hell, I don't even live in this state anymore."

The decision is careful, and color floods back into the knuckles wrapped around her knitting needles. "I guess you can meet me back here at six and we'll walk someplace close."

"Okay." He tries to connect with her eyes and thank her, but she won't look at him.

*

At six, she's at the shop door in jeans and an iron-gray wrap of spiderwebs punctuated by little burgundy rosebuds. It's artsy, all knit. "You make that yourself?" he asks.

"I did."

"It's pretty."

"Thanks. There's a place a few blocks away," she says, and walks half a step in front of him with fingers woven through her shawl, pulling it tight.

The reservation's under her new name, and when they sit down Rust's confident and unafraid because he's already got a slight load on thanks to the flask in the glovebox. "So," he says. "Remind me what I did in Rockport." It's a soft pitch - _make fun of Rust,_ a concept anyone who knows him can get behind.

"You showed up at my work high as a kite, acting all tough in your leather jacket till security kicked you out. Remember?"

"No."

"You were so loud, calling 'em pussies and asking if they'd ever shot their guns before. You really don't remember this?"

He's too ashamed to look up. "No."

"When I got home you'd broken into my house."

"Oh, shit..." he remembers it now. "An' I cut your phone line so you couldn't call the police."

"Yeah."

Fragments come back to him - he remembers sitting on the couch crying about how tired he was, then her hitting him - a thousand stinging little blows with a vacuum attachment - until he left. "I'm sorry. I was pretty fucked up back then."

"You were before that, too," she says, and she's looking straight at him now, cold and clinical. "You still using?"

"Not anymore. Still drink, but nothin' like I used to."

"Are you working?"

"Uh huh." He doesn't really want to get into it, so he turns it back over to her. "You ever get back to school like you wanted?" When he'd thought of her in the yawning interim, he'd always pictured her as an art teacher with goofy earrings, bolstered by the pleasure of being low key and loved.

"No. Not after - I didn't want to be around kids." She's sullen a moment, then brightens. "I have a son, though."

"Oh, I wondered. Since you have a different name and all."

"Yeah, I re-married, but it didn't last long. Jack's twenty now, goes to UNT. I personally think he's majoring in girls, but there's not much I can do about it from here."

She produces a picture from her purse, and Rust focuses on a corner because he can't bear to look at the boy. "He's a real good looking kid."

"He is. Smart, too."

"Huh."

"His father's an asshole. I rushed into it without thinking. I mean, I'm grateful for Jack, but I wasn't in my right mind then."

Rust nods. He knows a little bit about that.

They're both grateful for the bustle and buffer of a busy restaurant, and it's never quite comfortable but they don't run out of things to talk about, either. He learns that the Hill Country Yarn Crawl is a real thing that Claire somehow cares about, and they produce idle talk about their families: the cancer in Claire's and Rust's mother, whereabouts still unknown. She talks about Jack, he talks about Marty, and a noisy birthday party across the restaurant seems to distract them every time they need it.

Claire doesn't want dessert but she wants Frangelico. "You still drink that shit?" Rust sighs in disgust and looks at the waiter. "Guess you better bring me one, too," he says, and it nets him Claire's first real smile of the night.

It's horrible, thick and sweet but he gets used to it, and the dim light makes Claire prettier. "You look good," he says. "Bet you're jugglin' five guys at a time."

"Not even close. I tried some of that online dating, have you done that? What a joke. It's all false advertising."

"My friend Marty says the same thing."

"Yeah. Nobody tells the truth about themselves on a profile, which I guess makes sense if you're an asshole." It's probably the wine and the aperitif, but she looks at him all the time now. "Honesty was always one of your better qualities."

Rust nods; before he was a bitter, pickled mess, maybe it was.

"Something that still bothers me about us is that when things were good, they were really good, you know? I never knew it could get so ugly."

"Yeah, but what happened...that's like the twelfth circle of hell, Claire. Nobody gets through that in one piece." _Why weren't you watching her._ They'd screamed it until their throats were raw, and every time he crawled home high, Claire stood over him and dared him to die. Rust shakes it off and wants to say her name. Why aren't they saying her name? "I wanna talk about Sophia."

Claire nods. "All of her things are at my apartment, if you want to see." Tears rise and shine and he reaches out for her hand across the table. It's the exact size and feel he remembers, and she lets him hold it on the walk home. Her height in his periphery is so familiar, even after all this time.

Her upstairs apartment is cramped and smells like almond candles. Needle and yarn bundles are tucked everywhere like devil traps. "Sorry it's a mess, but I really didn't think you'd be here."

"It's fine," Rust says. It looks like a warm, crafty crazy lady lives there, though there's a subtle unhappiness behind almost every object. A dozen unfinished projects, Emergen-C packets, abandoned coffee mugs. Lotus prints and books thick with dust and lines of incense ash.

There's a couch that's so stacked with tangled clothes there's no sitting on it. "Let's see...I guess let's do this." She tips junk off a Rosemale-painted chair and pulls it into the center of the room. "You can sit here," she says, and pulls two blue Rubbermaid totes from the coat closet, one big and one small. "The little one's all pictures. Might be some you don't have."

"I don't have any," Rust says, and cracks the top. It's full of Walgreens envelopes fat with photographs, and Claire stands behind him, hands lightly on his shoulders.

"They're in order," she says, and Rust starts at the beginning.

There's Claire, pregnant and trying to hide her belly behind a paper shopping bag.

Sophia, wrapped small and oblong in pink.

A smile that transcends the flexible paper it's on, a young man with bright eyes and dimples already worn deep from use. He'd wanted more kids and a twenty fifth wedding anniversary, and he always thought someday they'd have more money and live closer to water.

The tears rise fast and burn like fire. "I can't look at these. I'll try again in a minute, but...sorry."

Claire reaches over him to take the box and uses the soft voice he always imagined would be her teacher voice. "I'm sorry. I thought you had copies." She pats his back and says, "I've got 'em all digital now, on disc. There's these, and another printed set in a bank vault, and my mom has a set, too. You can take these with you, if you want. The whole box."

He nods because words hurt too much.

"The other stuff's easier to look at. I think so, anyway. Want to try that instead?"

The big bin's lined with tissue paper, and Claire unfolds the leaves to reveal the meticulously packed toys and tiny clothes inside. She's even kept new Pampers, folded tight and white, and Rust takes things out, turns them over in his hands, and sets them down on the overturned lid. "Oh, man. I forgot about these." It's the little multicolor sandals that both fit in the palm of his hand. Sophia only wore them once, but they kept them on her dresser and marveled at their cuteness all the time. "How often do you look at this stuff?"

"Probably once a month I get it all out. I thought I'd be doing a lot better by now, but it never goes away, you know? Like, I saw a hypnotist to try and forget the name of the driver that hit her. Didn't work, though." She sighs and squeezes his shoulders. "I try not to beat myself up about it 'cause you don't just bounce back from a thing like that. Doesn't look like you have, either."

"No."

He presses a soft yellow blanket to his face and there's nothing familiar. "Nothing smells like her anymore," Claire says, but Rust kneads it against his face anyway, and she bends and tips her nose to the top of his head. "You still smell like you." Her arms ring him from behind and the blanket is suddenly secondary. All of this is, in a way, because Sophia isn't here. But they are.

He folds the blanket over his knee. "Here. Come around where I can see you." He lifts her hand overhead and leads her around in a jitterbug turn to sit on the edge of the coffee table. He doesn't let go of her hand and looks into her eyes hard, so she won't look away. "I'm...Claire, I'm real sorry for everything I put you through. It was bad enough and I made it so much worse."

She presses her lips tight and nods.

"That's not even what I came here to say. I mean it is, but...okay, it doesn't matter how it happened, but this last year I kind of...died for a minute."

"Really? How?"

"Doesn't matter. It wasn't bad, just this long sea of black, and I could feel this warm undercurrent of Sophia on the other side. She's there. Waiting for us, and she's not two anymore, she's, like, every age. It was like we were never apart. I thought you should know." Claire's crying before he's even done, and he pushes the bin aside and scoots up close to get his arms around her.

"Is she happy?"

"Yeah. She's perfect, even better than she was with us."

"Could you touch her?"

"Not exactly. It's hard to explain, but...we don't have to worry about her anymore. It's still hard not to be sad sometimes, but we'll see her again."

The warmth and scent of her clogs his nose and when they separate, they continue through the rest of Sophia's things, sniffling but happier than before. At the end Claire gets down on her knees and re-packs every little object just so. "I'd help, but it looks like you got a good system," Rust says. "I'd probably just fuck it up."

"I'm sure you would," she says. She's still the sweetest mean person Rust's ever known. "Where you staying tonight?"

"Figured I'd drive a while and find someplace off I-10."

She arranges the last pieces of tissue paper on top. "You can stay here, if you want."

Once it's been silent long enough to realize it's not a joke, he takes the three block walk to get his stuff out of the truck. He smokes a little, takes a few flask hits, and can't quite believe she's warmed to him this much. It's probably more pity than actual warmth, but whatever. He'll take it.

In her unlocked apartment, he could swear she's neatened up the living room since he left, but not so much that the couch is an overnight option. "Where'd you go?"

"In here," she calls, from the bedroom, from bed.

She's curled up with the lamp on, waiting, and he's so shy it's hard look at her. He didn't expect this, isn't even fully sure it's something he should be doing, but there's no way he can't. His shirt comes off and Claire sees the scar and recoils. "Rust, what the hell is that?"

He turns his back. "Don't think about it, just close your eyes."

He switches off the light and finds her by feel, by memory, and brushes his mouth against hers and hides the scar between them. When Claire opens herself up to him they're young again, like all the times she clawed up his back and the sarcastic neighbors applauded behind paper-thin walls. Rust's friends taunted him, _just one person for the rest of your life,_ and he'd said yeah, I'm fucking good with that. Nothing's changed. She still comes like a freight train and when he's done he's got about a five minute window before he's dragged down by sleep.

Fingertips venture over the scar, then over the ones on his side. "Does it hurt?"

"No. Feels kinda good." Her fingertips anywhere on him always have.

"Did you...could you see her?"

"Not quite. It was better than seeing, if that makes sense."

"Is this how you almost died?"

"Uh huh."

"What happened?"

He glosses over the worst, but she still puts her hands on him and cries until the only way to make her stop is with his mouth, and they're at it again, panting and moaning in the darkness until his body's done and he falls asleep with his head nowhere near a pillow.

*

"Rust."

He groans like being shaken awake is the worst thing to ever happen to him.

"Rust, it's almost noon. I have to work in an hour."

_Noon._ He bolts awake.

"I don't mean to kick you out. You can stay if you want, but..."

"No. I gotta go." He re-dresses in last night's clothes and finds her in the kitchen, all paper and administration.

She puts coffee in his left hand. "Write down your number and where you live," she says, poking his right arm with a pen until he takes it. "Have you got an email?"

"Yeah, but I'm real bad at using it."

"Well write it down anyway." She writes her information down to trade. "I might see you sometime. Always meant to get over to New Orleans for fun."

"Come pick me up, then. I'm on the way."

"You wish," she says, but at least she's smiling. "Don't forget these."

He tucks the box of pictures under his arm, finishes the coffee, and kisses her goodbye.

Nobody says anything about love but there's still some old shred of it there, and on the way out of town he drops a pile of money at a florist: roses in soft seashell-type colors, way better than red. He covers a tiny white card with sentiment so raw it makes his eyes prickle, but he rips it up and writes another one and seals it fast so he can't change his mind.

 

  
_I'm serious. If you're going that way, come and get me._

 

 

The drive back to Louisiana takes two extra hours because he keeps stopping to look at the pictures. It gets easier and easier to look at them.

*

Home is a simultaneous comfort and let-down. Marty's there, fat and golf-sunburned by the look of the oval on his glove hand. "Anybody call?"

"No," Marty says. "But I've been gone most of the time. How'd it go?"

"Good."

"Get your closure?"

"Not exactly," Rust says, and wonders how much to disclose. "I, um, might to start looking for my own place one of these days. 'Case she wants to visit."

"Does she?"

"Dunno, I didn't ask."

"Guess we're too old for a sock on the doorknob."

"It ain't really like that," Rust says. "But it'd be nice to stay in this neighborhood, if you hear of anything."

"Yeah. Okay," Marty says. Rust knows he's disappointed and changes the subject.

"You wanna see pictures of my kid? I didn't have any till now." He takes an envelope from the middle of the box and opens the flap. "Look at her."

"Oh my Lord. That is some serious cuteness," Marty says, of the pigtails and the wagon and her next to a wall of orange cannas. He reddens and bites his lip, like Sophia was somehow his loss, too.

Rust narrates throughout the stack. "That's her in our backyard. Those stupid flowers...Claire'd cut 'em back and they'd come back twice as thick. Let's see...oh, this is at Christmas, an' I built that rocking horse myself. See that little wedge on the bottom? That's a safety measure I tacked on later 'cause she was hell bent on tippin' the damn thing over."

"A little daredevil, huh?"

"You know it," Rust says, proud and smiling. "And so pretty you couldn't hardly stand it. She got her mom's looks 'stead of mine. Anyway, that's enough for now." He folds the envelope back up. "You ever wanna look at ten million more pictures, let me know."

"Okay. Hey, you wanna go out for a beer or somethin'?" Marty asks. "I've already had a few today, but I was thinkin' about having one more."

"Thanks, but I kinda got some computer stuff to do."

Marty's eyes widen because Rust _never_ says no. "Don't you got better things to do than work? It's Sunday night and you just drove a bunch."

"It ain't for work," Rust says.

He's too nervous to check his email yet, but he digs in to research lush B&Bs with pale watercolor walls and chicory coffee.

It feels like he should know more about New Orleans.


End file.
